Friend, do yourself a favor and skip to the fourth and final section of this article if you don’t want to see me literally going all over the place with my thoughts.
I’ve gone through four days of training as a Pollution Control Officer, a role in what our country’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources is apparently requiring for more and more businesses and companies in these recent years. I’ve always held an interest in waste management – I’ve mentioned this once or twice before, and it’s nice to be able to finally act upon it… but it seems like after hour after hour and day after day of this stuff being shared to me in as little time possible, I’m beginning to have some second thoughts.
But that doesn’t immediately mean I’m quitting; no, sir, I’m sharing that to brag on the fact that these questions are asked, not as a deterrent, but a challenge to my resolve… and I think I’ll stay the course. I still think that this focus, this interest, and therefore this training is definitely worth powering through.
I should get it out of my mind that I’m going through all of this for mere compliance. Learning for compliance is such a chore, compared to learning out of real actual interest. With that said I’ll definitely be ending the 5-day training tomorrow with a bang… and, God-willing, I get the best score out of the five of us in the online class.
Speaking of training, today I also informed the church school administrator and their principal that I couldn’t make it to spend Chapel Time with Junior and Senior High tomorrow, because my focus would be on the said PCO training. I did, however, offer to make a recording of a message, which I believe I needed to do as a follow-up to the message I shared to them last week. I’m thankful to me in the past for sharing his thoughts on what I ought to share next.
All that build-up only to say that the following message is going to serve as a transcript of what I intend to be recording, immediately after I write and post this.
Hey there. I wanted as much as I could to come over and share to you guys in person… but I had to go be an adult and do adulting stuff. So I guess this is the next best thing – to record a message to be shared to you guys, with the hopes that I could see you all next week.
Before we start, let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, I am thankful for all that You do, and I am thankful for all that You have done. I thank You for the advances in technology, which have allowed me to record this message. I thank You for Ma’am Suzette and Ma’am Beth who have given me the trust to share this message. I am also thankful to the rest of the school and all the teachers for their commitment and the passion in what they do. But Father, most of all, I am thankful for my younger Junior and Senior High brothers and sisters, whom you have gathered together. I pray that You bless them today, and You bless all of us today, as we go through Your Word. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Let’s go straight at it. Now, if you have your Bibles with you, let’s go to 1 John 4:10, and it reads as follows:
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Okay. Scratch all that. So first off, I couldn’t keep going. After typing that verse I tried to make approach after approach, and it just didn’t work for me. I then just stood up, set up the camera and the lighting and all that… and then I proceeded to talk out what I had to say here, being consistent down the that prayer I just typed… but as soon as I would talk about the verse, it would all go downhill from there. There were too many videos that were being saved on the camera’s memory, all ending with me bailing out, telling myself to get my head right.
In my frustration, I just cried out loud, to no one in particular – I’m thinking too much.
That, followed by a silent, ‘help’.
It’s become a tradition now for the team that assists me in conducting my afternoon service, for us to meet online every 8pm, every Wednesday, to sort of catch up on how all of us were doing, and eventually, I would pray for all of us and for all of our concerns. Last Wednesday, we went through the same grind, and I listened intently to everyone else on the call – One wanted to cry out to the Lord for her brother who had all sorts of health complications, and if that wasn’t frustrating enough the kicker was that he was in the USA. Another one asked for prayer regarding a new addition to their family, having her own health complications as well. Still another one asked for us to pray for her family as differences in their belief systems have done damage to the peace in the home.
Here’s where I emphasized that it’s bad enough that we have our issues and our problems to face on our own, and that alone could be so heavy – but it’s made even worse by the observation that we share our home with others, and their problems become our problems, and their being overwhelmed with their problems rubs off on our being overwhelmed by our own problems.
It gets heavier and heavier – and it gets even worse! Because for some reason the prevalent mindset, especially here where I live, is that our definition of comfort and rest isn’t without us unlocking our smart devices and scrolling… click like here, comment there, but eventually, it happens – the problems and thoughts and issues of all our contacts online become our problems and thoughts and issues, and their anxiety and their being overwhelmed with all they share rubs off on our being overwhelmed by our problems, and the problems of those around us!
And there we were – we weren’t present with each other, but it was clear that everyone was tired – everyone was, and I believe everyone is overwhelmed.
But we thank God for the opportunity to pray. We thank God for the assurance of His listening to what we think is important, even if we know that He knows everything, and He knows what’s best. I went through everyone on the call in slow, yet steady prayer… and in the end, an elder who was on the call prayed for me as well, which I appreciated.
I closed, and left the call, primarily thinking that it was another meeting down, until next Wednesday.
But I failed to tell you about one other thing that actually keeps me coming back and encouraging these tired but steadfast strong men and women to keep signing on and picking up to join the prayer meeting – that is, recently we’ve been seeing prevalent themes or ideas coming up in the meeting – whether it shows up when we share with each other, when we pray for each other, it’s been coming up. And I would use those as prompts for me to determine what to share on Sunday.
Last Wednesday, it couldn’t have been any clearer. It wasn’t a theme or a trend or a common occurrence, because it came in the form of a verse: ‘You will keep Him in perfect peace, whose mind is constantly on You.’ A little Google sleuthing brought me to Isaiah 26:3, and that’s what I shared with my team after the call…
…and all this was what I shared to my younger brothers and sisters. Well, I’ll be sharing it to them anyway, through the resultant video I’ll be uploading. And that’s even if they consider using my video for their chapel time tomorrow.
Either way, I didn’t want to leave my WordPress family out. Besides, I believe I’m wanting to finish the 365 day quota far before the year ends.
On this note, however, I do want to remind everyone, just as Tim Keller told of the Maccabees, who, even while they were being tortured, were telling those within the sound of their voice – Trust in the Lord.
The Lord of Lords is bigger than anything you can face or encounter… which makes Him the Prince of Peace.
Yeah, I’m sure I told the kids that on the video. Now if only they played it tomorrow.
Until my next post, God bless you, friend.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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